1/3/23

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

In bed at 11, had some trouble falling asleep, was awake at 4:20, and up at 4:35, unable to sleep, one small porto grappa.  I Dreamt of representing an American CEO of some business in a proceeding of some sort with Vladimir Putin conducting an interrogation of my client, becoming abusive and my client losing his temper, calling for a break, and counseling the client.  Wishing for more sleep.  36 degrees with 15 mph wind from NE, wind chill at 26, high of 39 forecast before sunrise at 7:23,  sunset at 4:29, 9+ 6..

NFL Football, America's Gladiators.    Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin was in critical condition, intubated and his body cooled, Monday night at Cincinnati's only level 1 medical trauma center, after suffering cardiac arrest and collapsing on the field during the Monday Night Football showdown with the Bengals.  This season, he became the starter at free safety after Micah Hyde suffered a season-ending neck injury in Week 2.   As a young man, he saw the worst things in life as he lost three of his close friends to bullets, senseless deaths that the police never solved. And in his own home, his father, Mario – trying to make ends meet for his wife Nina and Damar – turned to selling drugs.  After decades of fandom, I stopped watching NFL football about 5 years ago.  Mostly it was because I didn't want to watch a business activity operated by a group of billionaire/millionaire owners based on very large men colliding with each other often at high speed, entailing physical injuries in every single engagement.  I wish I had had the decency to stop supporting those owners long before, at least by the time all the evidence was out about repetitive football concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.  The game is a more involved, more complex, much more highly skilled and more entertaining version of professional boxing, a legal form of assault and battery.  For years, I watched this game in which in every single contest, one or usually more players received physical injuries, often requiring assistance to get off the field.  It was a world of "hard hits" and "vicious takedowns" and "looks like he got his bell rung."  Even before Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest last night at age 24, there was much controversy over brain injuries to Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, like Hamlin 24 years old. (Tagovailoa said a big inspiration and motivation for his performance as a high school quarterback was how his father disciplined him, saying he used a belt whenever Tagovailoa threw an interception.)   At the NFL level, football is a violent, brutal game featuring predictable injuries, many of them serious, to players.  It is not a mere "contact sport" like basketball; it is a collision sport in which spectators watch to see who will get up after each collision and who will stay down.  When players are helped off the field by medical staff and teammates or carted off the field on an ATV, or driven off by ambulance like Damar Hamlin, the fans stand and applaud, in recognition of his sacrifice.  Then it's on to the next play and the next collision and the next injury timeout.  And we love and support it, rarely counting the cost to the gladiators and to our psyches.

U.S. News Alters Its Bogus Law School Ranking Grift.   “We realize that legal education is neither monolithic nor static and that the rankings, by becoming so widely accepted, may not capture the individual nuances of each school,” Robert Morse, the chief data strategist at U.S. News, and Stephanie Salmon, senior vice president of data and information strategy, wrote in the letter [to law school deans.  Yale Law’s dean, Heather K. Gerken, said in a statement Monday, “Having a window into the operations and decision-making process at U.S. News in recent weeks has only cemented our decision to stop participating in the rankings.”  'nuf said and about time.  Inherently misleading, a disservice to applicants seeking admission and to the schools deceptively ranked.

Andy's Birthday is today, 51.  Yikes.

Watching the Election for Speaker of the House, thinking what a large number of yahoos there is in the House, and the Senate too for that matter.  What a difference between Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy.  What a difference between James Clyburn and Elise Stefanik.  How thoroughly unadmirable so many of these politicians are, on both sides of the aisle.  Jim Jordan, anger and loathing oozing from every pore, looking like he's been bounced on his head in too many wrestling matches.  Dan Crenshaw with his pirate eyepatch.  Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Jewish space laser fame.  Matt Gaetz - nogoodnik.  McCarthy himself, Trump bootlicker, 19 votes short of what it takes to win the Speakership.  Quid nunc? . . . . 3 ballots, McCarthy short of majority 19, 19, 20 votes.  Adjournment.

Good Bones BY MAGGIE SMITH

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.